Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It’s All About The Feeeeemaaaaales

Perfect Crime by Helen Fields

The Donor by Clare Mackintosh

Fractured by Karin Slaughter

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The Perfect Crime (Helen Fields) *** Stephen Berry is having a rough night. Or a rough life, really; he cannot seem to get his bipolar disorder under control and his long-suffering girlfriend has left him. Desperate for some quiet, he intents to jump off a bridge, but a suicide counsellor who happens to be nearby intervenes. Stephen is quietly grateful, but then his body is found dead a few weeks later at the bottom of a tall tower. The cause of death seems like a […]

Merry Christmas!

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

The Girl With the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block

Cold Shot to the Heart by Wallace Stroby

Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League by Britni de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D'Arcangelo

All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris

Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortune of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty by Jonathan Pearson

The Blonde on the Street Corner by David Goodis

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Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! Having been busy with Christmas prep, avoiding Delta and Omicron, and other various things, I haven’t had the time to write long, 250+ reviews for these books. I figured I’d just cram them all here since I know I won’t finish Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate before New Year’s Eve. The Fortress of Solitude *** This clears the 3-star threshold but just barely. I appreciate what Lethem is trying to do here and I usually enjoy his work. But this was a […]

Urban Blues

Paper Gods by Goldie Taylor

Violent Spring by Gary Phillis

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I read two great gritty urban mystery reads this past week. Both uniquely told in their own way but both addressing the politics and social systems of Atlanta and Los Angeles respectively in a way that I found compelling… Paper God (TW and minor spoiler: Book has a trans character in which a threat of violence is implied and a tragic love story is involved. Nothing happens to them but it’s also not the most trans-positive story) I’ve read a lot about Atlanta this past […]

About Those Kids

The Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin

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When writing about James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates said that Baldwin had the ability to talk through you. What I took that to mean is that Baldwin’s words were such a focused fury, combining intellect and rhetoric that it connected with the reader in a deeper way than most. I felt that somewhat in The Fire Next Time, but I especially feel it in this one, which is almost more personal. Baldwin doesn’t let his foot off the gas for this book-length essay. Drawing on American history, […]

Memory and trauma and loss and family

Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey

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Memorial Drive, by Natasha Trethewey, is a memoir where Trethewey tells the stories of her childhood homes, growing up as a child of a black mother and white father, the shift in her relationship to her mother, and, eventually, her mother’s murder while Trethewey was still a young woman. This is the core of the book, but it really is so much more than that. A relatively short read, Memorial Drive is captivating and visceral. At its length, I would have expected to read the […]

None of This is Fair

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I needed an Oprah’s Book Club book for the Book Riot Read Harder challenge and this one took place in Atlanta so it seemed like a good choice. The novel deals with the false imprisonment of a successful black man and its after effects on him, his wife and his marriage.  While this seems especially relevant in today’s context, I was surprised to realize the novel takes in the early to mid 2000’s rather than current day. Ray Jr. grew up in small town Louisiana; […]



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